Throughout history commanders in chief have visited our troops at war, especially during holidays.
A Thanksgiving column at the Washington Post outlines “two centuries of presidents visiting fields of battle,” starting with President Madison visiting the troops defending Washington at Antietam and at Bladensburg, Md., in 1814.
President Lincoln also visited the troops at battlefields, sometimes at such risk to himself that when “rounds snapped over his head,” a young officer shouted at the president, “Get down you fool!”
In “modern times,” Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, Clinton, Bush and Obama have visited the troops in combat zones.
President Barack Obama greets U.S. troops at Bagram Air Field after a surprise visit to Afghanistan, May 1, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Some have called such visits “dog and pony shows;” some call them “political stunts;” some look at such visits as a sincere gesture of gratitude and respect by a commander for his troops.
Regardless, America was hoping that Trump would make his first visit to the troops in warzones this Thanksgiving.
It is now past midnight in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the day after Thanksgiving in the deserts and the mountains where our troops were hunkering down once more on a Thanksgiving Day.
Perhaps Trump has visited the troops this Thanksgiving, and reports of his trip are being withheld for security reasons.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a West Point graduate and a war correspondent has mixed emotions about such presidential “visits” and writes about President George W. Bush visiting Iraq one Thanksgiving.
We were all sitting there [a division base camp on the edge of Mosul] eating when several flat screen TVs mounted on the sides of the mess facility started showing CNN coverage of Bush serving turkey to the troops down in Baghdad.
Everyone stood and cheered. He was the president who had ordered them into this dangerous place, where their friends were being killed nearly every day, and he was wearing one of those ridiculous pretend satin flight jackets with “ARMY” and a division patch on the front, and he was safe in the middle of another base camp somewhere in Baghdad, but by god, he had flown into Iraq on an Air Force C-130 that had had to do a “corkscrew” landing in Baghdad because aircraft there frequently came under insurgent fire as they approached the airport. He was not spending Thanksgiving Day at the White House, or Camp David, or at his ranch in Texas, or up in Kennebunkport, Maine with his family. No, he was spending Thanksgiving with a whole bunch of soldiers in Iraq. He was the commander in chief, and even though everyone in that mess facility in Mosul knew his appearance in Baghdad was a stunt, he was acting like the goddamned commander in chief.
Stunt or no stunt, it does not appear that the present commander in chief forsook the comforts of Mar-a-Lago to visit the troops anywhere* this Thanksgiving.
As to those “corkscrew approaches and landings” that many presidential aircraft have executed in the past, “There were no reports of Air Force One having to execute a ‘corkscrew’ landing in Florida when Donald Trump flew down to spend Thanksgiving with his troops at Mar-a-Lago this week. He was, however, exposed to hostile fire on CNN, MSNBC, and Twitter. Does that count?” Truscott asks.
The president did issue a “Presidential Proclamation” from the safety and comfort of “home,” recalling “the courageous and inspiring journey of the Pilgrims” and acknowledging “the sacrifices of our service members, law enforcement personnel, and first responders who selflessly serve and protect our Nation.”
* Edit: Trump did visit the Lake Worth Inlet Coast Guard Station,7.3 miles from Mar-a-Lago.
